College of the Redwoods football will take the field for one last time in 2018 on Saturday when it faces San Jose City College, on the road in San Jose, at 1 p.m.

Redwoods head coach Frank Borba said despite his team’s tough 2018 campaign, a win on Saturday would mean a lot for his program going forward.

“It would be huge to win,” Borba said. “It would give us a better record than we had last season and would give our young team some momentum and something to cheer about heading into the off season.”

Redwoods (2-7) and San Jose (2-7), on paper at least, are two very evenly matched teams. Redwoods and San Jose each enter Saturday’s final game with two wins on the year against the same two teams, Contra Costa and Gavilan.

Redwoods will come into Saturday’s road game off of a bye week and with a five-game losing streak while San Jose will enter Saturday’s contest with a bit of momentum after downing Gavilan 34-24 a week ago in Gilroy.

“San Jose has a pretty stout defense, they like to run a lot of deception at the line to try and throw off the offensive line,” Borba said. “We’ve been working with our offensive lineman for a couple weeks on how to handle that and I expect them to have the best game they’ve had all season. That really goes for our whole team though, we are as healthy as we’ve been since week 1.”

Win or lose, Redwoods has not failed to put points on the board in 2018. Redwoods is averaging 28.3 ppg on offense, double that of San Jose which averages just 14.3 ppg. Defensively, neither team is a world-beater. Redwoods has given up 39.4 ppg so far this season and San Jose, 30.6 ppg.

If there is a silver lining for Redwoods in 2018 it is that more than a few young players have played considerably more minutes due to injuries than they would have if not for necessity. That experience should pay dividends for Redwoods in 2019.

“A lot of guys had to play a lot of meaningful reps this season,” Borba said. “Next year, the game won’t be too fast for them, they wont underestimate what it takes to compete and they’ll be ready to go. We’ve taken our lumps this season but it will pay off.”